New Defender's Study Bible Notes

2:7 no reputation. That is, He “emptied Himself.” The Greek word is kenoo, and this self-emptying of Christ has been called the “kenosis” doctrine. Certain liberals have suggested that He became human in the sense that He was fallible, possibly even sinful, but such thinking is wrong and dangerous. He not only “came down from heaven,” He was still “in heaven” (John 3:13). He was not sent down from heaven in sinful flesh, but only in “the likeness of sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3). He was “made in the likeness of men” with a miraculously created human body that inherited nothing whatever of Adam’s sinful nature. Even though He exchanged the outward form of God for that of a human slave, He never stopped being “very God of very God,” as the old creed expressed it.